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Showing posts from 2020

The 41st Millennium: Sprawling, Contradictory, and Delicious

One Peter Atkinson recently left a comment regarding a throwaway line in my recent interview with 40K newbie Drew . Quoth he: Could I please request a long tangent about how the sprawling, contradictory nature of 40K is both its biggest weakness but also one of its great strengths, maybe as a standalone article? Ask and you shall receive, Mr Atkinson.

Primaris Apothecary Conversion

The Primaris Apothecary is a gorgeous sculpt that I have been coveting since its release, so as soon as I had enough angry bald men standing on rocks, I ordered an angry bald man standing on his patient. The stock kit is pretty much a diorama on a base. Whilst that's very cool, I'm not a fan of my dudes conveying such a specific moment. It looks kinda weird to be standing over poor Brother Steve before the army's even taken any casualties. Besides, I like having unique characters. Here's how he turned out:

Vive l'Empereur!

Any long term readers will have probably noticed the odd historical post cropping up from time to time. Mostly 1940's flavoured Bolt Action posts involving a lot of tanks and things. It is no secret that Jeff, Emma, and I are history nerds, amongst other things. With the seemingly never ending pandemic lockdown isolating Emma and I in our own home with nothing more than a Sharpe dvd boxset and Assassins Creed: Valhalla we started to stray into more historical pastures for our gaming needs. This was probably was also influenced by yet another new edition of 40k with yet another level of complexity being added to an already convoluted system. A system that I, personally, am finding harder and harder to maintain a grip of and keep an interest in. However, this is a rant for another time, this time it's all about one of my favourite things to do: line up little plastic soldiers in neat lines and roll dice at them. Napoleonic wargaming is possibly the ultimate in lining up little pl

Plagued of Ikarra

More additions for my Ikarran Necrons today.  This time around it is the turn of the various flavours of Necron that have succumbed during the long aeons of hibernation. So, to continue the telling of the origins of the Ikarrans and in order of age of the models: The Flesh Harvest Infected by some virus, these units now seek to recover all they lost through transference, thinking that if they can harvest sufficient biological matter from their victims they will somehow transform back into their previous selves.  A true terror to their foe, they inhabit pockets of a nether dimension and phase onto the battlefield where they are least expected. These are the old metal sculpts of the Flayed Ones, and they are absolutely fantastic, if horrifying.  It's not until you get really close that you see how the flesh is sculpted as if stretched over the skeletal frame underneath, and the way it hangs over the faces with the odd eye peering through is deeply disturbing (the close up picture abo

Badged in Blood - Corpse Grinder Chaos Cultists

 It's once more time to get down and dirty with the poor deluded souls who think the Gods of Chaos will provide for them. Yep! Cultist O'Clock again folks! What? No, I don't have a problem, YOU have a problem! Ahem. On with the show...

In Defence of Firestrike Servo-Turrets

I've seen a few people on social media suggesting that it's thematically inappropriate for Space Marines to have a defensive turret, and that therefore, the Firestrike Servo-Turret shouldn't exist. Since this is obviously the most important debate of our time, I'd better weigh in. My position is that those people are talking out of their butt trumpets. In the manner of any rigorous argument I should begin by declaring any biases that might affect my judgement. My biases are twofold. Firstly I like the overall look of the mini even if there are elements I find silly (more on that later). Secondly I like it thematically for my army, since visually it makes me think of a Roman ballista supporting their heavy infantry. Even with those two factors, I was still on the fence until I saw 40K Badcast host Campbell's paint job of it . Five minutes later I'd smacked the buy button. Which is weird, given that I've been much more minimalist with mine. I was very tempted

Lords of Wrath & Ruin - Word Bearers

Welcome, one and all, to a very special Tainted Thursday. For today we reveal the head of the snake, the great minds behind this Word Bearers army, the Lords of the Graven Star:

Vassal Constructs

Today's instalment for the growing Ikarran dynasty are the Canoptek constructs, mindless automata whose sole purpose is the maintenance and protection of the "true" Necrontyr and their homeworlds.  By their very definition, these units can be a little dry or bland for the more narrative kind of experience I like, so with my apologies to fiction writers everywhere I plan to include a snippet of colour text that has been knocking around in my head that helps me bring them to life.  If nothing else, it'll give you all an insight into how I imagine these delightfully spooky constructs would act. First up are the Cryptothralls, or murder-barrels as I like to think of them (left and right, I'll cover the central Cryptek in a later post).  With their backwards angled blades, and extremely hunched poses these are glorious models.  The centralised glowing power orb (not really visible in the image below sadly) is a new feature that seems to be a common theme in the Canopte

Painting Sector Imperialis Buildings

Today's post is the last one in my three-part  Chapel Project Log . So far we've covered Sector Imperialis construction tips and how to make your own rubble; today's post is about painting Sector Imperialis buildings quickly(ish). I've included pretty pictures because them's the rules. Also Lasgunpacker specifically asked for photos with minis to give a sense of the scale, and we're nothing if not extremely responsive to readers' requests - see the gallery at the end, mate. When I first saw the Sector Imperialis frames, I was concerned that the insane level of detail would make the painting unapproachably complex. Ultimately it was the modularity of the kits that drew me to them, combined with Chris Peach demonstrating that you could get away with being more minimalist with his Kill Team board . Knowing that a quick and simple job could work gave me the confidence to dive in, and of course once I was in the water, it wasn't much of a stretch to come up

A Handmaid's Tail - Daemonettes of Slaanesh

Welcome to another Tainted Thursday, fellow devotees of the Great Four. Today, the air in the bunker seems to have taken on a somewhat more perfumed aspect than normal...

Fortunate Sons - The Possessed Gal Vorbak

Welcome, fellow supplicant to the Neverborn, on this Tainted Thursday let your mind reach out into the Empyrium. Call forth what dwells there and make a home in your flesh for it. Welcome the changes that come... ahem. Sorry, got a smidge carried away there, suffice to say: We're looking at possessed today:

Rubble in the Tubble: adding rubble to city ruins

Like most longtime 40K players I have a lot of ruined buildings covered in skulls. But now--at last -- I  have a ruined building covered in skulls with actual rubble and a base. Ye God-Emperor, it makes a big difference. Today, then, I'm going to explain how I went about doing that rubble incase you're rubble-curious and want to have a go yourself. I'll also cover making the big honkin' styrene base. This is part two of my Chapel Project Log , the first part of which covered some tips and tricks for working with the Sector Imperialis kits. At the time of writing the building has been spray primed, but the actual painting hasn't started. Making the Base The base is a combination of styrene sheets and rods. The sheet was cut into squares the same size as a Sector Imperialis floor panel to add some visual interest, and these squares were then poly cemented to a grid of square styrene rods. It turned out Revell's contact cement wasn't quite hench enough for th

Children of Chaos - 40k Beastmen

Greetings fellow seekers after Primordial Truth, welcome to another Tainted Thursday. Today we are looking at a unit that kinda, sorta doesn't exist... ish.  These are an expanded unit of the Blackstone Fortress datasheet beastmen. I really wanted my Word Bearers to be a full-on "Chaos soup" with a wide variety of unit types and even species represented. So when I saw the datasheet for the beastmen and it said "unit size 4, only one of this unit can be used" I kinda went "huh". Wouldn't it be nice, thought I, if we were able to just say "sod that, I'm using multiples of the 4 all in one unit like every other datasheet and call it good". No sooner was that thought in my head than it's friend "wait, I only play with other narrative nutters, no-one will care" arrived. Having checked with the other bunker dwellers that this was indeed the case, I got on with the thorny problem of picking the right beastmen. Clearly the Black

Interview: a newbie starting out in 9th ed 40K

Osinell of Craftworld Iybraesil Two years ago I used two of my friends to test the theory that RPGs could be an effective gateway drug for tabletop wargames. You can read the original interview with Becs and Drew-Deece  here , but with the very scientifically rigorous sample size of 2, the answer appears to be yes. Albeit slowly, on account of an actual pandemic . Becs is painting her way through her Delaque gang as I write this. Drew not only painted up a gang to fight in our first  Necromunda  campaign, but also borrowed an undead army to participate in the  Border Princes campaign , and has now painted enough Craftworld Eldar that we've started playing 40K every Sunday (the UK is still very full of plague right now, but she's in our house's bubble). Words cannot express how good it's felt to put minis on terrain and throw dice, but that's by the by. I sat down with Drew to discuss how she's found getting into wargaming, and specifically 9th edition 40K. Her a

Rapturous Beasts - Venomcrawler and Raptors

 Greetings my cheeky chaotic cousins. Welcome to another Tainted Thursday and it's a doozy, we've got daemon engines (well, a daemon engine) and flying murderers aplenty so without further ado, lets get to it!

In covid world, models store you

Today I get to delve into the heady subject of model storage.  Isn't this exciting boys and girls, I hope you are all sitting comfortably as I'm going to begin. There comes a point in any hobbyists journey where they start to think: Hmmmmm, where am I going to store these models, all the cupboards in the kitchen are full and I'm not sure how the cold in the fridge will affect the glue? or: Right, the shoebox and tissue paper just isn't cutting it for my 6000 points of Eldar, how am I going to keep them all safe? The second one is not a lie, I've seen this.  Their excuse was that mini storage was too expensive! Generally however, this is when you start to wonder about how you are going to store your models.  It's something I've been making a few changes about with mine and our group has been asking a lot of questions so I thought I'd bring together everything I've worked out over the years and share it.  This is not everything there is on storage, and